Google Home Uses Chromecast to Deliver Multimodal Experiences

Google Home recently added a new feature to its Chromecast integration. You could previously open YouTube or Netflix on your Chromecast-equipped television using a short command to Google Home. Now you can also view the weather. This is a good use case, because weather can involve delivering a lot of information which can be hard to fully comprehend and recall in a voice-only experience. Enabling weather data display on a screen provides the opportunity to improve user comprehension speed while offering additional information depth.

Multimodal Interaction and the Rise of Voice-Driven Screens

This is a small step for Google but an important one from a multimodal display perspective. Amazon has shown how multimodal can work on external screens with Echo Show. Google has a multimodal concept implemented on mobile through Google Assistant. The integration with Chromecast shows how more Google Assistant services will over time take advantage of screens already in the home. This means Google can start to executed its in-home multimodal strategy regardless of whether the Google Assistant driven smart displays curry favor with consumers in 2018.